Red Culture

Red Culture

Xi Jinping’s rise to power in the Chinese Communist Party

‘This is the greatest crisis facing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since Tiananmen Square’ is a statement that one hears after almost every scandal in China, and eventually starts to sound like a cliché. But the obvious thing to point out is, at some point, there must be a crisis that warrants the comparison. And it’s hard to think of a better equivalent than coronavirus. I believe this is the greatest challenge the party has faced this century, and how the party will look when it emerges is one of the most important questions not only for China’s, but the world’s future.

The current political infighting that has embroiled the party has its origins in the type of politics developed during Xi Jinping’s time as leader. How the party got to this stage is a fascinating insight into the nature of one-party rule and the conflicts such a system creates.

The Last of the Aesthetes

The Last of the Aesthetes

How postmodernism took over the literary world

Walking through the empty streets of Prague in 1979, a lone English philosophy professor approached the top of a staircase in a seemingly deserted apartment building. Two policemen were waiting at the top, seizing the stiff, bespectacled man and shouting for his papers, before throwing him down the stairs.

The professor would wipe himself down once the police had departed, continued up the staircase towards a room full of silent people. They were students and professors also: and the professor was there to teach a course on Wagnerian philosophy.

That professor was Roger Scruton, and he would later be arrested for his lectures in the school, banned from the country until the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989.

“There was a real consciousness that it was a life and death struggle,” said Scruton, talking of the school he helped run in secret. “Either these societies were going to be killed off by communism, or people were going to try and keep them alive in the catacombs.”

Red Terror and Big Data

Red Terror and Big Data

How the Chinese government spreads global authoritarianism

On the 17th March 2018, the Chinese president was sitting with his back to his party delegates, about to undertake the most important action of his entire life.

He got up from his red chair, walked slowly across the red carpet, with red flags towering over him, and carefully placed two red pieces of paper into a polished red box. Accompanied with melodic applause and marching music, he quickly looked up at the crowd of photographers, gave them his characteristic half-smile half-grimace, and returned to his seat.

His red papers would be followed by thousands of others, men dressed mostly in black suits with grey ties, some wearing traditional minority clothing, often followed by a nervous bow or a nod to the cameras. The result was announced a few hours later, with 2,958 for, two against, and four abstentions. And with that Xi Jinping became China’s first president for life, effective immediately, at a congressional session where most had been expecting him to announce his successor.

Odyssey to the East

Odyssey to the East

The shift of power in post-coronavirus Europe

The Polish have a saying, “nie mój cyrk, nie moje malpy”, which translates to: “Not my circus, not my monkeys”.

The country has made huge and largely unnoticed economic strides since communism retreated from its borders, with the Palace of Culture and Science looming over Warsaw as a testament to Stalin’s lost grip on the region, his name struck off the placard before the building was completed.

Now, with Western Europe divided over the issue of eurobonds to help save its southern half from coronavirus, a near hundred-year old political concept is bieng dusted off to transfer power to the east: The Intermarium.

The Crimes of Tedros Adhanom

The Crimes of Tedros Adhanom

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as well as being the first WHO director without a medical degree, also has a somewhat political background compared to his predecessors. On his online biography, the WHO lays out his qualifications as Ethiopian Minister of Health from 2002 to 2012, impressive stuff.

Aside from his medical credentials, Tedros happens to be a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) which is an organisation about as peaceful as its name suggests. Founded as a communist revolutionary party that came to power in 1991, it led a guerrilla campaign against the Mengistu dictatorship and formed a coalition with two other ethnic parties after his exile.

How to avoid getting sued for your writing

How to avoid getting sued for your writing

A guide to understanding libel law

In journalism, people will often threaten you, lie to you or claim what you are writing is inaccurate. Even on Facebook and Twitter, you can be sued for libel - and US companies will often bring the case against you in the UK in order to have a better chance of winning against you.

Here’s a guide on how to avoid that, whether you’re simply a humble commenter or running a full-blown news site.

Is the Wuhan Coronavirus a Bio-weapon?

Is the Wuhan Coronavirus a Bio-weapon?

Unravelling the conspiracy

In a now widely circulated 2018 interview with Chinese state TV, military scientist Chen Hu was asked about the capabilities of an engineered bio-weapon. Hu described the effects of such weapons as ‘devastating’ and ‘equaling that of an atomic bomb’. He then went on to appeal the need for creating defensive capabilities against such events.

A year after he gave that interview Dr. Chen was dead at age 57. In his obituary the numerous achievements of the scientist were outlined, among them the fact that despite being a military doctor, he had helped develop groundbreaking research using CRISPR gene editing; specifically the mice embryos that had been given an engineered resistance to HIV in 2017.

My Time with the Alt-Right

My Time with the Alt-Right

Who they are and what they believe

Over the last few years there have been numerous articles of people who have “infiltrated” an alt-right group, and tried to expose its inner workings to the public. This will not be one of those articles. This is not an expose or an attempt to name and shame. I spent over a year with an alt-right group from 2017 to 2018 and wish to write an article that represents what members of the alt-right community worldwide actually believe in as factual a way as I can.

I first attended a meeting with an overtly alt-right group in 2017 in the Netherlands where I was living at the time. The Dutch elections were right around the corner, and in trying to find online news about the election, I found several videos from a group covering them in English from an alt-right perspective.

The Areopagus

The Areopagus

A free speech tale

“He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.”

― John Milton, Areopagitica

When Paul the Apostle first climbed the slopes of the Areopagus to give his sermon on the resurrection of Christ, he knew he would be breaking the law be preaching a foreign god on the hill of Athens.

Jesus had died on the cross some seventeen years ago, and Jewish residents had driven Paul out of Thessalonica and Berea, leaving him to travel Greece alone.

The Best Books of 2019

The Best Books of 2019

We wrote this list because we frankly felt that most of the “best books” list that we see online are pretty poor and tend to only represent a small range of fiction books that appeal to a limited demographic.

We wanted to cover the most interesting books this year that we read between the two of us, this means that there’s a slight bias towards authors that we were already familiar with but there are several books on this list from author’s we had never read before.

Escape from Limbo

Escape from Limbo

How the rest of the world can avoid following Japan into economic slumber


“A thought crossed his mind: How do you make poor people feel wealthy when wages are stagnant? You give them cheap loans.”

― Michael Lewis, The Big Short


Racism, the toxic social issue that dominated the social discourse of the ‘90s and early 2000s, is soon to be replaced by an even uglier phenomenon: Ageism - as each social group pulls towards its opposing financial incentives.

According to research by the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI), 45% of baby boomers in the US have no retirement savings at all. Only 55% of boomers have some retirement savings and, of those, 28% have less than $100,000. This means that half of American retirees are, or will be, living off Social Security benefits. The UK and Europe paint an even gloomier picture.

Why China Won't Reform

Why China Won't Reform

Facing up to the new threat

In 1994, US President Bill Clinton gave a press conference in China to discuss relations between the two countries, and the state of human rights development. Five years after thousands had been gunned down in the streets of Beijing and hundreds more killed in Tibet, they were looking less than optimal.

Ever the optimist though, Bill made it clear that although there were serious human rights abuses continuing in China, he was sure they were dreadfully sorry about what had happened in 89, and felt things were improving. Just like Korea and Taiwan, he said, it was clear that as Western products flooded into China, democratisation would inevitably follow. China even enjoyed most favoured nation status with the US all throughout the 1990s in an attempt to accelerate this process. Putting up with the show trials and labour camps were just the cost of doing business.

How To Protect Your Data Online

How To Protect Your Data Online

A Complete Guide to Digital Privacy

Privacy on the internet might seem like an incredulous sentence nowadays. Asking for privacy on the internet today is like asking for a way to never be captured on public CCTV, or to fly abroad without using identification.

Gone are the days of the anonymous free exchange community. Now, Big Zucker is always watching, and expressing the wrong opinion can lead to censorship, banning, or even to less kind internet users looking to dox you – meaning the publication of your personal details in order to disincentivise you from further expressing said opinions.

To even want privacy is to be immediately ridiculed. Don't you know the NSA or the 14 Eyes affiliates are recording everything you do, collecting information from every country with a windows computer and tracking your every move? If that wasn't enough, Google is busy recording every detail about your life and feeding it to their super-intelligent AI, Deepmind, who is being groomed to one day take over the universe and upload our brains to the quantum hive mind.

The Last Portrait

The Last Portrait

Modern art’s value deficit

“One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be — though possibly a coloured canvas and a sheet of notes will remain — because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone.”

 

Oswald Spengler, 1918

 

 

A hundred years ago when Oswald Spengler wrote those words in The Decline of the West, the downfall of Western Civilisation was self evident. The highpoint of European control over the globe would come a few years later after Britain and France took over the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. Later decolonisation would prove some of Spengler’s ideas right. Though this can largely be blamed on the following world war brought on by a government that had taken his book a little too seriously.

 

The clearest evidence to Spengler of the decline of the West was of course its art. The legacy of Renaissance art in Europe was now being replaced with monstrosities from the Fauves and the Cubists who were making paintings of formless colours and shapes. Combined with the primitive African and Native American styles of dress being celebrated by the leading designers of the day, this seemed to Spengler to signal the beginning of the end.

The Two Empires

The Two Empires

A comparison of EU economic policy with the late-Roman economy

Religious scholars traditionally agree on 33AD as the official date that the historical Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under the order of Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. What is less well known is that this was also the date of the first ever recorded economic crisis, which almost brought the entire Roman economy to its knees.

It all started when trading firm Seuthes & Son, an important Alexandria spice trader, lost three well-laden shipments in a hurricane half-way through crossing the Red Sea. Soon afterwards, another wealthy firm at Tyre, Malchus & Co., suddenly became bankrupt after its Phoenician workforce went on strike and the embezzlements of a freedman manager caught up with the company.

Should We Build the Next Particle Collider?

Should We Build the Next Particle Collider?

The search for the next frontier in physics

“China has an incredible opportunity to become the world leader here — don't waste it. A good example is to build the Great Collider that can lead high energy physics for the next fifty years.”

-Stephen Hawking, November 2016

 

The passing of Stephen Hawking in early 2018 deprives the particle physics community of one of its greatest and most respected scientists. It also occurred at a time when the future of particle physics looks very uncertain. After the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012, the search for new physics since has yielded very little, leading to concerns over what the next particle collider would even be looking for.

Working for Greenpeace

Working for Greenpeace

An inside look at those arrested at the extinction rebellion protests

It was not until watching my previous work colleagues being arrested on national news that I began to reflect on my time working at Greenpeace.

Before starting my day, I walked past Goldman Sachs’ headquarters and saw that its entrance was full of police and people with placards. I had only recently finished writing a story on British hedge fund Astra busy taking Goldman to court for losing $70m to the bank, which (allegedly) broke established criteria around a synthetic CDO (the same kind of financial jiggery-pokery which was going on prior to the 2008 financial crisis), so I was not overly upset by the sight of Goldman being on the Extinction Rebellion hit list.

The Closed Economy

The Closed Economy

Why finance will never get easier to understand

One of the largest meta analyses ever conducted into language development, headed by Steven Pinker among other scientists at Boston University, shows that our innate ability to learn multiple languages does not end as early as we think. 

All of us, I am sure, know at least one person who grew up speaking more than one language. Scandinavians, for example, are often raised speaking at least two in the household - exposed to music and film - until they pick up the grammar and vocabulary effortlessly. 

While language proficiency stays with us well into our teens - up until 18 according to the study - the meta-analysis also underlines that learning a second language after the age of ten will not guarantee fluency.

The Electric Brain

The Electric Brain

Is a trans-humanist future for humanity inevitable?

If you grew up in the early 2000s like I did, you probably feel like historical trends are catching up with your age. When I was young it felt like humanity had simply ceased to invent new things. Computers, TVs and mobile phones were just slowly getting thinner, and the internet was simply a convenient way to do homework. These technologies were refined every year, but so slowly that it was imperceptible except in hindsight like the hands of a clock. As a teenager, the only technology that seemed to me to show genuine progress was video games.